Underpop bonus - a joke?

Logging in and seeing 26% Miller VS pop vs 2x37%.
Ok, though times. Oh look: 16% bouns XP and narnites. Well, i get why no one is joining the underpop fraction then. With this pop, you will never win any alert, thus not gain rewards (regardless how hard you try). You will likely be doubleteamed (even natural double teaming when all empires fight with half of their pop on each enemy) is resulting in a loss.
One can only pray that the whole fraction is sticking together on one lane and force the other fraction to do unfun ghostcaps. That way, some competiotion can be held until the ghostcappers make a cut. However, in such population numbers one can still hope that the enemies have a meatgrinder going on...

DEVs said they monitor this problem. Maybe a statement can be made?

No you dont. You expect that a high enought bonus will lead to players switching over (causing the bonus to shrink anyways). This will make it more clear: If i want to improve or play a character what is may gain in switching to another character just to support a underpop faction?

Furtehrmore VS is nearly always underpop over the years and there where countless threats about why. Bonuses dont help you if the faction is simply not attractive.

A high enough bonus could absolutely make players switch to under-pop. After all, they switched to over-pop for reasons. What are those reasons? More gain for less effort. How about a a certain amount of XP and ISO per minute, plus a Nanite generation boost depending on how under-pop you are from the highest faction? Let those bonuses ramp up exponentially with population disparity. There you go, those guys switching for rewards would likely stay under-pop with easy and profitable gain, plus more nanites for more boom. Rewards can absolutely work.

Lol, with the new update my entire outfit (on VS Emerald) moved over to NC xDDDDD

Might as well delet vanu from game

Why?

meh...design a more appealing faction next time. No amount of bonus will get me to play an unappealing faction that uses lackluster weapons.

On Connery, I was TR on Helios before TR on the server was popular. As I remind people, I joined at a time when TR could barely rub together 20% server population and I still consider that era of ally deficit superior to any ally-rich one that followed. Same for my VS characters on Emerald and, I guess, NC on Briggs and the European servers. (I don't play NC guys very much.) I follow a strict one faction per server rule requiring me to learn opponent tactics from a single point of view and it refuses influence by population shifts.

There is no amount of punch to either my nanite gain or my experience gain that you could afford that would deter me from this.

Edit: I made the percentage generous.

Good for you. But as we can all clearly see, plenty of people have absolutely zero problems swapping factions, for on reason or another. I made it a point to always play the under dog. Now with friends on every faction, Plus a desire to Aurax the other ESF, I frequently switch to group up with the faction that needs help in the air, catch up with buddies I see online, or join in on some fun shenanigans that my friends are up to on other factions. And I won't lie. After months and months of playing on the losing side, I did quite a bit of faction hopping to upgrade my severely neglected implants.

Thats wrong again. Your idea is that players switched or joined because the faction has overpop, but thats nonsense. I played VS for years and later switched for NC. The reasons for this is not that NC has overpop or is strong. Its simply the fact that their infantry weapons fit my playstyle better and thus are more fun to use and that their MBT is an actual tank and not that hovering something VS has. Its simply the point of fun play.

This issue could have been resolved years ago by allowing cross faction use of faction specific equip like in PS1. The devs didnt want it and since we cant play one character with several factions we are stuck with how things are now.

Still little gain and unimportant. Again: What do i get from playing one char if i want to progress the other?

you are irrelevant.
roughly 10% of the playerbase follow whatever is OP, currently thats NC and to a slightly lesser extent TR.

I don't know if we can clearly see it. While I don't follow these population threads as religiously as some people who do believe there is a major threat, I do not recall adequate statistical proof from any of the ones I have participated in indicating faction swapping on any grand scale. Population change, maybe, but never going as far as to prove "changing == swapping." Rather, I'd contest that I am the type of player you should be wanting to target, despite my previous chiming of the futility of that endeavor. The recent number who came on forum to complain about queues and return multiple times to again complain about queues just points to the persistence of a substantial number of "no faction switch" players. At the very least, players who follow their initial idea to play X and, blocked from that option, would rather not play than not play [faction]. This same mindset can also be experienced in discussion about favorite continents, i.e., the players who would rather log off than play on [continent].

You're more of what the game needs, and not who we need switching sides. Reliable players are good players. It is clear that we have players who swap factions for rewards, I'm proof of that and I've got plenty of guys who switch around with me. I'd rather not switch for bonuses, and just as you can say that you won't switch, I can say that when I didn't switch for social reasons, I'd have stayed where I was or even chased under-pop for when I was starving for ISO. What you need to realize is that just because you can't fathom faction hopping for resources, doesn't mean that plenty of other people will.

the thing is, if only 10% of the population switch factions for a collective reason, that means 1 faction suddenly drops to 30% and the others go to 35%+
if only 15% of the population switch factions for a collective reason we suddenly have 28% on one and 38% on the other 2.
and thats just switching away from factions, not even switching TO a faction, like when ever Vanu gets a badly balanced new toy and suddenly jumps from 28% to 40%+ before everyone returns to the other factions to abuse stuff there.

We have some plans in the works that should help improve population balance. We're not ready to talk about them quite yet so I can't say much, but it's something that's on our mind and we're working on.

Care to prove or support any of these claims?

VS pop after the Canis released

You can make all vehicles, grenades etc completely free and give double XP for a largely underpopped faction but it wont help to balance things or make it fun for the lionshare of the underpop faction.

There is only one true solution: MAKE BEING UNDERPOPPED FUN. It stops mattering how often you are underpopped or how much Zergs fight you. A key part in this is making it possible for underpops to fight back, as well as giving them the tools to not be stuck in a spawnroom but at least DO something to slow the enemy down or defeat them.

if i get infinite C4 and valkyries fighting underpop is gonna be a lot of fun

Give the underpopped faction a fleet carrier

wrel has spilt the beans on this already
https://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/8re3b6/spawn_revamp_design_doc/

personally i'd prefer for underpop bonus to be handled on a region by region basis (with limitations),
because sometimes on Cobalt VS can have the least players but the majority of their faction belongs to one or two zergfits and they'll just zerg over everything while TR and NC are spread across the map.
when attempting to defend a base from a zerg the defenders should have a HUGE boost to nanites per minute,
this would do two things, first it would make it more fun, being able to spam more nades or pull max more ofter,
plus it'd give the defenders a better chance of pushing the zerg back.

i much prefer this than the harsh limitations that the proposed new spawn system brings
(with fewer spawn options and longer respawn times...)